


red in tooth and claw

by actualkoschei



Category: Hellboy - All Media Types
Genre: 20 headcanons in a trenchcoat, Chess is romantic, Developing Relationship, Identity Issues, Identity Reveal, In a manner of speaking, Light Angst, M/M, Non-human characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-14
Updated: 2019-04-14
Packaged: 2020-01-13 08:45:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18465484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/actualkoschei/pseuds/actualkoschei
Summary: It's hard being a monster. It's easier when you're not alone.





	1. Chapter 1

Late enough at night, the darkness began to seem solid, pressing down. Ben felt that if he raised his hand, just a few inches above his face, he would feel something there, syrupy-soft and sticky. He sighed, turning his face back over into the pillow. Sleep seemed far away tonight. It was hot, skin beading up on his skin, but that wasn’t the problem. Something else kept rest away. A restlessness, a crawling under his skin. On nights like these, he felt something else beside him. His shadow stitched to his back. 

It came on stealthy padded feet, with glowing eyes and knife-sharp fangs. The beast inside, straining to get out. The scars on his face itched, and when he scratched at them, his nails felt too sharp. His fingers felt clumsy, foreign. For a moment, his mind struggled to grasp that his hands were his own. They felt wrong, at once too big and too small. 

He twisted sharply onto his back, sat up suddenly, blanket and sheet slipping away from his sweaty chest to pool around his waist. His breathing came fast, short and sharp. He pulled the fabric of his sleep shirt away from his skin, letting in some air to brush against his clammy body. 

Climbing out of bed, Ben stumbled down the hallway to the nearest bathroom, squinting at his reflection in the murky fluorescent lighting. A flicker of surprise crossed him at seeing his pupils still round and his teeth still blunt. His face still human at all. He was shaking, he  realised , his fingers clenching down on the porcelain edge of a sink. He let himself fall forward, resting his forehead on the cool glass of the mirror. 

A splash of cold tap water against his face failed to bring his head clear, but the sound of the water did conceal the creak of the door opening. 

“Ben?”

The sound of his name brought him startling, spinning around, fingers clenching painfully against the sink. “Oh. Abe.”

“Didn’t mean to startle you.”

“You didn’t.” Ben tried not to sound defensive. “What are you doing awake now, anyway?”

Abe’s face hadn’t always been the easiest for Ben to read, with its unusual looks, but by now he was confident in thinking he’d gotten reasonably good at it. And the look on Abe’s face right now was that of somebody who was hiding something he didn’t want to tell. “A nightmare. What about you?”

“Insomnia. That’s all.” And that was normal, wasn’t it? Everybody suffered from it sometimes. It didn’t mark him out. Wouldn’t demand questioning.

He startled once more when he felt a cool, webbed hand come to rest on his shoulder. “Interested in some company?”

A “ _ no”  _ was on the tip of his tongue, but he looked into Abe’s yellow eyes, and something in their depths made him reconsider. “Yes. A game of chess?”

Abe seemed reluctant to pull his hand away, yet he answered in the affirmative, and willingly followed Ben down the hall to the library. 

In his first days at the BPRD, Ben had struggled to understand the differences between the library and the archives. In time, he had come to learn that he preferred the library to the archives, the former lacking the latter’s sterile and dusty environment. Now, the library seemed a sanctuary, with its softer lights than the corridor, and its smell of old books. Ben sunk gladly into a chair opposite Abe, at the table where the chess set was semi-permanently set up, his heartbeat finally slowing to a normal beat. His temperature seemed to be dropping, too, leaving him wondering, with a sick, guilty feeling, whether he had really been so warm because of the external temperature at all. 

Abe’s hand landed on his, and mercifully, it still felt cool against him. “Just insomnia?” He asked, clearly not believing the story Ben had told.

Ben sighed, and then took a few deep breaths, searching for an answer. “Just nightmares?”

Abe stiffened up and withdrew his hand. “It happens. Bad dreams. We all have them.”

“We all have insomnia. You’ve not been yourself lately.” Ben wasn’t sure where it was coming from. The concern, yes, it had been there a while, but it must be sleep deprivation loosening his tongue.

Abe seemed to shrink into himself. “I’m fine. It... it happens to me sometimes.”

He looked small, and he looked lost, and his hands were trembling, and it twisted something inside Ben’s chest. “Tell me.”

“I don’t think you’d understand.” Abe looked down at his hands, seeming conscious of something about himself.

Ben felt claws behind his skin, keen enough to make him shift in his seat. “Try me. You might be surprised at what I’d understand.”

A moment of silence hung between them, a fragile thing that could not have survived daylight. It seemed longer than it was before Abe’s voice broke it. “I dream of the ocean.”

“Why’s that a nightmare? It’s not like you’re going to drown.”

Abe made a face somewhere at the halfway point between pained and amused, and then turned serious again. “No. I’m not going to drown. It calls out to me. It wants me to go home.”

The soft seriousness of his voice made goosebumps of unsettlement rise on Ben’s arms. “You are home. Here."

“Am I? I’m a monster. Maybe I should go back to where I came from.”

_ Did you come from the ocean?  _ Ben almost asked, but yanked his curiosity back, knowing it would be less than appropriate under the circumstances. “We’re all monsters here.”

“Not all of us. Maybe Johann and Roger, maybe  Hellboy  and Liz, but not Kate, or the agents. Or  _ you _ .” 

“I told you before, you’d be surprised what I’d understand.” It slipped out before Ben could stop it, though he bit down on his lips as though he could pull the words back onto his tongue. 

Abe looked at him with an examining gaze, his head turned slightly to the side. “What are you, Ben Daimio?”

Ben wanted to say.  _ I'm human _ . He wanted to say  _ what are you talking about?  _ But instead he  said,  “I don’t know.”


	2. Chapter 2

He looked down at the table, or tried to, trying to avoid that luminous golden gaze. But when he looked back, there was nothing in the depths of Abe’s too-large eyes but a sort of curious sympathy. 

“Tell me.” Abe echoed Ben’s earlier words. 

“I wasn’t born anything like... that. I was just a normal kid. A soldier’s kid, you know.” A faint twitch of his lips, almost a smile, crossed his mouth then at the thought of family, of childhood.

“And then what happened?”

“It was when I was in the Special Forces. They sent us to Bolivia. Told us a group of nuns were being held hostage by a religious sect. That was a lie.” Ben’s hands were starting to shake again. He twisted them together in his lap, under the table. “It wasn’t religious extremists. It was tribal conflict, but more than that. There was... something else.” He bit his lip, and for a moment, could barely continue. “The jaguar god. I don’t know if it really was a god, or just a spirit, or what. But it was bloodthirsty. It, or the man it possessed, tore through our unit.” He stopped again, breathing ragged, eyes stinging. 

“Were you the only survivor?” Abe attempted a guess, trying to ease the way of Ben’s confession.

“There were  _ no _  survivors.” Ben laughed, a short harsh bark, with no  humour  in it. “I was  _ dead _ . I woke up three days later in a body bag. I thought I was  _ lucky _ .”

“Weren’t you?”

“I didn’t survive because of luck. I survived because I was...  _ taken _ .”

“Taken...?”

“It’s inside me now.” The words came now in a rush, through clenched teeth, but there was no stopping them. “The jaguar god. It’s inside me, and I can barely control it.”

“That’s what you’ve been hiding.” Understanding dawned across Abe’s face. “That’s what you’re scared of.”

“I’m not --” the denial was instinctive. “Oh, fuck it. Yes. I’m scared.”

“Ben.” He hadn’t noticed Abe getting out of his chair, moving to his side, until he felt hands cupping his face. He stiffened under the touch but did not pull away. “It’s okay. Nobody here is going to think less of you for that.”

“I’m dangerous.” Ben pressed his face deeper into Abe’s hands, despite himself.

“So is Liz. So is Roger. I’ve killed people. That’s why we’re here.”

“But...” Ben couldn’t find the words he wanted to use to argue. Couldn’t find any words. Looked up, and looked into Abe’s eyes, and was struck silent.

Abe lifted Ben’s face, stroking his thumbs over his cheekbones. Looking down at him, looking back at dark eyes and wet lashes. At features carved  at once  finely and roughly. Scars that spoke of pain and courage. Abe leaned closer, and they were sharing the same breath. He thought he could taste the dampness of Ben’s mouth on his breath, and then their mouths were touching. A soft kiss, a closed-mouth kiss. Abe’s eyes fluttered closed, and he sunk into the sensation. 

Ben was warm against him, radiating heat from under his skin, and Abe drank it up. His cold body craved warmth, in a way he did not always  realise  until it was given. 

They broke apart, and Ben looked up at him with wide eyes. “Abe.”

“I’m sorry.” Abe felt driven to say, even though he wasn’t. 

“No.” Ben got to his feet, and even then, was still looking up at Abe. But the distance was less, allowing him to close it again for another kiss, this time bruising hard. His hands went to Abe’s waist, cupping it, pulling him close by it. 

Ben’s blood-hot lips ran down from Abe’s mouth across his cheek, down to his throat, to move over his gills. Abe made a startled sound, an almost-pained moan, and pressed up against him. It felt good, electric-good. His hands scrabbled at Ben’s back, unsure what to do with themselves. 

Ben smirked against his neck. “Sensitive.”

Abe struggled for his voice, breathless. “It seems so!”

Ben made a soft sound, affectionate, and nuzzled into his neck again. 

Abe laughed, gasping. “If I’d known you’d have this reaction to being told I wasn’t scared of you... might have tried harder to get you to talk sooner...”

Ben shook his  head and  dropped it to Abe’s shoulder. “No more talking. Shh now.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is mainly based off the 2019 movie and Plague of Frogs. No, I have no idea when it's set. All speculations on were-jaguar biology are merely speculation. Also, Abe has webbed hands and you can fight me on that one.


End file.
